


discussion and repercussion

by tiend



Series: writing wednesday prompts [7]
Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: 587th, Clones, Gen, Insubordination, Jedi, Original Character(s), dress codes, fancy dinner parties
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-04
Updated: 2018-08-04
Packaged: 2019-06-21 02:34:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15547689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiend/pseuds/tiend
Summary: for finish-the-clone-wars prompt 'the letter' - a recalcitrant not-quite-Jedi is commanded to appear at a fancy dinner party, and doesn't quite manage to behave herself in front of the visiting dignitaries.





	discussion and repercussion

Nine-Ninety actually bowed over her hand as he presented her with the letter. Morwen rolled her eyes at him, but took it as graciously as she could manage this early in her watch. He turned on his heel with exquisite sarcasm and marched himself off to join the caf queue. It was real paper, not flimsi, sealed shut by a wafer that looked like Umbattzo had been hitting the etiquette manuals too hard. She felt the table’s interest spike, and looked up to find them watching her with the clone intensity that told her she probably wasn’t getting out of this one.

“Knife?” she asked, correctly expecting every one of her officers to be carrying something.

Rangi was closest; she pried the seal off with his neat little droidsticker, and scanned the contents briefly before cursing and tossing it on the table. There was a brief scuffle for possession.

“Sir?” asked Mote, who had lost. Triple-Tap had it, and was laughing at her. Asshole.

“Formal dinner,” she said, scowling. “Some General and Marshal Commander are dropping in on us on their way to the Outer Rim, and Umbattzo’s gone full Consular.”

“Sir, excuse my presumption, but what are you going to wear?” said Heron, always conscious of the battalion’s dignity. “You don’t have any formal Jedi robes, do you?”

“Fierfek,” Morwen swore. She didn’t have any formal robes, Jedi or otherwise, and she couldn’t half-ass it, either; she’d be representing her battalion up in the stateroom. “No, you’re right, Heron” - waving him off - “I’ll think of something.”

“You said a Marshal Commander?” said Rangi, having grabbed the sheet. “This says Obi-Wan, so that’s - that’s got to be Cody. Cody.”

Her officers’ faces transformed with something as close to worship as she’d seen since introducing them to hot chocolate.

“Who’s Cody?” Morwen asked, curious, and was deluged with information. A big deal, especially to a clone; Cody was one of the original command-tweaked decants, and he outranked Jedi. Outranked her, in fact.

“Nine-Ninety didn’t give an invitation to Banjax,” observed Hush.

“I’m sure it was an oversight,” said Heron, who hadn’t been invited either. On paper, both he and Banjax were the same rank as Morwen, and had more seniority. In practice, they were clones, she had a lightsaber, and she was careful to keep her opinion of their Jedi General to herself.

So Morwen kept her face as still as she could, and made a mental note to follow up with Nine-Ninety, just in case. Commander Banjax had the other infantry battalion on Umbattzo’s flagship. She didn’t know him all that well - hadn’t had time - but he seemed a decent, competent man. It did give her an idea.

“What if I wore dress greys? Should be relatively easy to get out of stores, and Heron can lend me his insignia for the night if they don’t have any on hand.”

“Sir, they won’t fit,” said Triple-Tap with finality. “At all.”

“Two of my medics do fatigue tailoring, sir,” volunteered Rangi, slowly. “I could ask them to help with the fit.”

“Tailor your fatigues? Why would you -”

“A liberty pass caps out at less than a ship’s watch, sir,” said Triple-Tap. “If you want to make friends with the locals, it helps if they can see exactly what you’ve got to offer.” He winked at her, and oof’d forward, exactly as if he’d been kicked under the table.

“No!” exclaimed Morwen, scandalised, and then - “Are you issued prophylactics? Do you need me to -”

“Sir!” Mote cut her off, horrified. “The medics - the medics have it under control, sir.”

“If you say so,” she said, dropping the subject to his relief. “Can you ask your men on my behalf, Mote? I can pay them in flavour sachets; Po shipped me some more boxes just last week.”

“Shoes!” realised Triple-Tap. “Sir.”

“We could get one of the cleaning droids to polish your half boots, sir?” said Rangi. “And use some blacks to make some sort of gaiters, up to the knee? If Mote’s men can re-use the gription points they won’t slip.”

“Blacks would work,” said Morwen. “We could even glue them in place if we had to, it’s only one evening.”

So they arranged it. She requisitioned two sets of officer’s greys and handed them off to Mote’s medics to be unpicked. They cut down the jacket for her shoulders, but -

“This is ridiculous,” she wailed, standing in the middle of the officers’ wardroom in her underwear, as the two medics inserted triangles of material down the outside seams of the pants. “Don’t any of you have hips?”

“We don’t need to. Clones and Jedi. Two halves of a perfect whole,” deadpanned Triple-Tap, re-hemming one of her jacket cuffs. Morwen considered throwing something at him with the Force, but subsided. Every last man of them was good at ducking, and if he retaliated - she’d been stuck with too many pins already.

On the day of the dinner she wore her non-regulation greys to the morning parade so her battalion could see she was kitted out properly. Morwen felt the swell of pleased satisfaction coming off them and stopped caring about any lack of Jedi propriety. By now she’d be surprised if the entire fleet didn’t know everything down to the menu and the seating chart; the GAR rumour mill churned as efficiently as everything else the clones did.

Even after talking to Nine-Ninety, Banjax had not been invited, and curse Umbattzo’s habitual Jedi myopia. Morwen fumed a little for his and Heron’s sake, half-wishing she’d left her lightsaber in her cabin. The Marshal Commander was the only clone at the table, although not the only one in the room. Umbattzo’s junior staff officers had been pressed into acting as servers for the night, in the same dress greys as herself and the Marshal Commander.

By the third course, she was dying a slow and suffocating death. Kenobi and Umbattzo had an apparently limitless supply of polite nothings to mouth at each other; the fleet officers, all natural born, were self-medicating with the wine and wouldn’t talk to a mere infantry officer even if they were sober; Padawan Commander Njime was too worried about spilling anything on the pristine tablecloth to concentrate on anything but his elbows, and the famous Marshal Commander Cody’s face was a masterpiece of blank disinterest. Even his Force signature was tamped down.

Abruptly reaching the end of her tether after failing to block Umbattzo’s latest inanity, Morwen tapped out the GAR’s SOS code as quietly as she could on the rim of her plate. Too late, she saw that Njime had not recovered from the soup course, and was doing a breathing meditation into his salad. The Marshal Commander, however, looked at her for the first time since they’d been introduced at the equally stultifying pre-dinner drinks. His face didn’t change from the polite mask, though; she affected a look of great desperation, and repeated the code. One corner of his mouth twitched, briefly, his scar dancing up his face. He tapped out one of the standard duress codes in reply, silently, on the tabletop. A much better idea; she copied him to tap out an acknowledgement, and requested his evac precedence. The corners of his eyes crinkled. Urgent, tapped out the Marshal Commander. Emergency scramble. Then something she didn’t know that turned out to be “at maximum speed” after some to-and-fro. Matters became a great deal more tolerable now she had someone interesting to talk to.

It was no-one’s fault but her own that she was caught some four courses later; Marshal Commander Cody was fluent, while she was often reduced to spelling things out letter by letter like the rawest cadet.

“Madame?” queried Jedi General Umbattzo. “Madame dhu-Thuva, is there a problem.”

“Not at all, sir.” said Morwen, blandly. “I fidget while I think sometimes.”

“Would you be so kind as to share the nature of your thoughts with the rest of the table?” said her commanding officer. It was not a question. Even Njime was paying attention now, dead saints march again. 

“I’m not very familiar with infantry tactics,” she started. Umbattzo nodded at her, graciously, pleased she was acknowledging her ignorance. “But neither are the Jedi.” Umbattzo’s face froze. “We - the GAR, I mean - aren’t competent about something as basic as logistics. The rolling stack method of resupply - we only implemented that last month. We’ve got to get better somehow, and fast - why don’t we, for instance, have any of the Academy of Carida materials available to us, if not actual faculty?”

“The Academy of Carida does not have the Force to guide them,” Umbattzo sniffed.

“Neither does the majority of the GAR,” Morwen said, sharply.

“The GAR, however, does have us,” smiled Umbattzo, motioning at herself and General Kenobi.

She bit her lip before saying something unforgivably insubordinate. General Kenobi stroked his beard, and said nothing. She caught him exchanging looks with the Marshal Commander, but could not interpret it.

“They have me, too,” Morwen said, with more emphasis than she’d intended; Umbattzo didn’t like ‘emotional outbursts’. “My responsibility to my troops - I mean that -”

“Of course, you’re nervous. Still, you’re just a Padawan,” said General Umbattzo, kindly. “Wisdom will come to you with time.”

“Sir,” said Morwen, stiffly, cursing herself. The Marshal Commander caught her eye, one last time - he looked almost thoughtful - as she turned her gaze back to her plate. She refused to make eye contact with with anyone else for the rest of the meal.

Two weeks later, Nine-Ninety dropped a package in front of her at mess, without his usual flourish.

“It’s from Marshal Commander Cody,” he told her, waiting with the relaxed air of a junior officer who has already prepared an airtight excuse for his late return. Hush had his knife out instantly; Morwen slit the package open with a very non-reg vibroblade, and shook the contents out onto the table.

“Oh,” she said, picking up one of the chip cases.

“What is it?” Triple-Tap was at the other end of the table, craning like a long-neck.

“It’s the complete set of works from the Academy of Carida Press,” said Mote, wide eyed. “And this case is from Anaxes.”

“You must have made a good impression, sir,” Heron said, pleased. She repressed a snort; all she’d made was a right tit of herself in front of high command; not at all what Heron was imagining.

“There’s a note,” said Hush, holding it out. Morwen’s stomach swooped; she couldn’t read it in front of her officers. They were damn near as perceptive as Jedi. She stuffed it in her jacket pocket and sealed the flap.

“What are you going to do with all this, sir?” asked Rangi, turning the Anaxes case over and over as if its secrets would fall out into his hands.

“Invite Banjax and his crew to our new discussion group - yes, Nine-Ninety, you too,” she said; Nine-Ninety shut his mouth, satisfied. Morwen guessed he’d know where to find a slicer that could make bootleg copies for the lieutenants; they’d probably do better by themselves, away from the senior officers. She’d talk to Njime, too; the kid needed the education, and Umbattzo might not shut it down if her Padawan Commander was involved. “But more importantly, write to say thank you to Marshal Commander Cody.”


End file.
